


Hero of Her Own Story

by LMX



Category: The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: Any Earth where law can be challenged by mortal combat is gonna be a scary place, Backstory, Canonical Character Death, Cisco Ramon (mentioned) - Freeform, Earth 19, F/M, Harrison Wells (mentioned) - Freeform, mortal combat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-21
Updated: 2017-06-21
Packaged: 2018-11-17 00:32:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,679
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11264277
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LMX/pseuds/LMX
Summary: In 1992, Earth 18 breached into Earth 19 and they spent the next five years embroiled in a war that would have devastating consequences on both sides. Cynthia Reynolds was 11.It was what came after the war that shaped her life and her future.





	Hero of Her Own Story

**Author's Note:**

> I was a little angry that Cisco got pissy about Cindy having a partner before him. Characters have backstory before you meet (and fall in love with) them, Cisco.
> 
> Then I had a long hard think about growing up as someone with vibe powers on an Earth that was decimated by the use of vibe powers, and taking on a job as the person who hunts down and kills people who have or make use of vibe powers, and quite how thoroughly that would fuck a person up.

At the time of Harrison Wells disappearance, there were sixteen collectors on Earth 19, with at least one based on each continent at all times, with the exception of Antarctica. There was remarkably little breach activity on Antartica.

That meant sixteen people, total, in the entire world, with the power to identify the vibrational frequencies of other people and other universes and to travel between them. Sixteen people to defend their universe from everything the multiverse could throw at them.

At one point, generations distant now, there had been hundreds more people who could vibe on Earth 19, but after the breaches were opened from Earth 18 and armies had poured through them, after the surprise attacks, the enemies who had taken their doppelgangers' place, after guerrilla warfare and explosive breach closures, deaths numbering in the hundreds of thousands… Well things weren't so easy afterwards for people who had vibe powers.

After an Earth-vs-Earth war, everything was harder, and trust was hardest of all to come by.

Once the final breach had been closed, with enough explosive force that the scientists suspected that it might have damaged Earth 18's very crust, there was a ban on interdimensional travel put in place immediately. With the science that had been developed in the face of interdimensional war, in the absence of any other vibe use it would be easy to spot any new breaches being opened – whether intrusive or outbound – and any breachers could be easily identified and isolated.

Then came the registry of breach-capable individuals, and the collection and destruction of any breach creating devices. The witchhunt that followed when someone maliciously suggested that no Earth 19 individual should be capable of creating breaches, so anyone breach capable must be an Earth 18 doppelganger, took nearly a hundred lives on three continents in six days.

The ones who survived the post-registration backlash were forced into military controlled camps for their own safety. An endangered species who were put to good use as scientists developed frequency detectors and shock-tags and sonic disruptors that would be used if Earth 18 ever broke back into their world. Each new military device was tested and kept a jealously guarded secret, but Cindy knew about all of them because – despite only being fifteen – she had experienced the offensive power of each one as she was told to create breach after breach.

When a group of three women broke out of the camp and breached away into the multiverse, they took with them the secrets to Earth 19's defense, and suddenly there was uproar – it was easy to enforce no one jumping *in* to their Earth, but how did you stop skilled people jumping away?

They turned to the naturally vibe-skilled then, and offered them a deal – bring the illegal travelers home for punishment, and earn some small freedoms. Do well and you'd earn your own room outside of the dorms, reduced testing time, space and equipment to practice preferred hobbies. Do well and you'd be allowed visitation rights with any friend or family member that might still remember you and have an interest in seeing you. Most importantly – for those who took up the offer – you would be allowed the freedom to vibe into the multiverse.

They would be tracked, timed, declared in breach of contract if they took too long checking in, but they would be free to explore new worlds, new people, new cultures, and free to *use* the powers that vibrated in their veins.

Cindy was eighteen when she was offered the chance to sign up. At that point she'd lived in the camp for three years, and the closest person to her age was five years older and a creep to boot. She didn't hesitate.

The first collection she was given, with a speedster looming over her shoulder, was the one her predecessor had botched. His body had been sent home, dead, through a breach that had opened directly onto the president's front lawn. There was no indication of a formal trial by combat, the collector hadn't made it back to file the paperwork, he was just dead.

She was scared, and despite her watcher she felt completely alone.

Most of her experience of human interaction outside the military personnel that supervised them had been through the movies and TV that had been the only form of entertainment in the camp. They'd spent a lot of time teaching her to fight, a lot of time honing her breaching skills, but Omar was *dead*. Not just defeated, but dead. She'd seen trial by combat before, heard her siblings rate each fighters' chances and shout and holler when the loser fell with neck broken or body bloodied. She'd seen dead before, but now she was going to go out into the world - into the *multiverse* with the intent to make someone dead or else come home dead herself. It didn't matter if they offered her trial by combat or if they came peacefully, either way they were going to end up dead, and it would be Cindy's doing.

She came home alive, the breacher and her speedster escort didn't. The next time she went out, she went alone. It took five years before they could persuade her to partner up again.

There was a naïve hope that had stuck with her for a long time, long after her first kill and years into her career as a collector. She'd thought that by taking on this job - a law enforcement job, really, wherever the orders came from - she would find some support from the rest of her Earth. If she could be seen to be doing good, if her name could be known and her powers known alongside it, she might find a place in amongst the heroes.

It took nearly a decade, hundreds of breachers, so many dead at her hand, before she realised what a failure in judgement that was.

The press made a big deal out of her missions, fueled by the propaganda pumped out of the military machinery that sponsored her. They villainised the breachers - their intentions always diabolical, their plans world-shattering, their excuses weak - and they used her codename liberally too, to dehumanise her and make her into the demon of breachers. They emphasised how futile breaching away from their Earth was, how inevitable death. She didn't get to craft her own narrative, instead she was the faceless weapon at the end of the military's fist. As personal as a missile or a bullet. She'd become, not a hero, but a bogeyman, a threat, an unstoppable, sadistic killer - capable of chasing wrongdoers through whole other worlds before taking their lives.

The turning point came in the face of a young breacher, a metahuman who had been unaware of his power until it had taken him by accident. He hadn't even left their Earth, simply jumped across continents - setting off breach alarms all over the facility where Cindy still lived.

She jumped to the incursion point alone and came face to face with a terrified man, clutching the arm of a soldier who looked just as terrified herself. They didn't share a common language, but another soldier stepped out of cover and said he would speak for them. With an interpreter, the breacher explained how the energy had gathered without his intent - blooming in front of him and dragging him forwards, only to deposit him here, in front of his wife who was six months into a military tour of breach-torn Canada, and so very missed. The wife had stepped forward then, her expression shellshocked but determined, already taking a fighting stance.

“No, no. Stop,” Cindy raised one hand and the soldier flinched back, half raising her own weapon. “Stop,” Cindy said more forcefully, gritting her teeth as she lowered her hand against every instinct.

“Why?” the breacher asked, bemused.

“Who saw you open the breach? Who saw you leave the breach on this side?”

“My wife and her spotter saw me arrive, no one else. There is no one else here.” The breacher indicated the interpreter as the soldier's spotter, and then around them at the blasted wasteland of central Canada. It had been beautiful here once, but Earth 18 had made use of the remoteness to sneak thousands of soldiers across the void without detection. It hadn't stayed beautiful for long.

“The rest of our patrol is miles away,” the soldier offered. “And we knew him the moment he arrived here, there was no need to call for help.”

A plan was budding, somewhere beneath the pounding of her heart. Maybe this time... “And when you left? When you opened the breach.”

“No one. I had worked a night shift - it was very early and the streets were deserted. There was no one to see what happened to me.”

This was it. Finally, finally, this one she could win. And even if only she knew it, even if no one else ever heard her name, maybe right here she could be one person's hero.

“I have two options for you - if I take you back and plead your case, there's a possibility you could become a collector. It's not a safe job, our numbers are small and they get smaller year on year, and it will be a long time before you have the freedom to see your wife again, but I think I have a good chance of saving you from the death penalty.” She stopped, took a breath. Took a moment to consider all the freedoms she might be throwing away right now, for a stranger. “Or I can open a breach to take you away from here right now, with your wife and the supplies you're carrying. I'll tell them you ran, that you only stopped long enough to convince her to leave with you. I won't chase you. If you decide to become a collector you will have to lie, lie well and for a long time. If you can't, it will be both our lives. I'm a good fighter, but I can't defend us both. If you decide to run, you can never come back here.”

There was light shining in the soldier's eyes, her grin vivid. “There are rumours told of you - of all the collectors, but of you specifically. They say you have an unblemished record. A perfect success rate.”

Cindy smiled, leaned forwards conspiratorially. “You should know - if someone has a perfect score they're either very new, lying, or manipulating the results.”

“And you?”

“Well... I'm not new,” she shrugged.

“You're a hero disguised as a monster,” the soldier mused. “How do you stand it?”

“I'm just doing what I must to stay sane. It's not always...”

“Today, you are a hero,” she said, accepting no argument.

“You'll take my number,” the interpreter said for himself, “And our Captain's number. If you ever need backup, you should call for it. I won't tell them what you have done here, but I will make sure you never stand unguarded.”

Cindy flushed, nodding as her phone was taken and numbers programmed into it. Her eyes pricked with tears as she was pulled into an abrupt hug and then released so that the solider could brush at her own wet cheeks.

“You'll arrive in the countryside, an Earth that has no idea of breaches or the multiverse. Your spotter will tell his supervisors that I arrived just after this breacher and we fought here - and then he grabbed his wife and breached away. I chased, and I'll tell them that I killed you somewhere far from here, but not before your wife was killed in the crossfire. You have to practice with your powers, to make sure they never act without your conscious thought again. You can't come back here for *anything*.”

“We'll be fine,” the breacher said, pulling his wife close. “We've survived much worse than this.” He sighed, and stepped away from her to step up close. “Remember, collector - protect yourself. Protect yourself so that you can save others, this is the thing they forget to train conscripts to heroism like yourself.” He looked at his wife as he said it, her smile warm, and Cindy was sure she wasn't the first to hear the advice.

Cindy opened the breach to Earth 34 and watched the couple disappear through it with nothing but an army backpack and each other. She closed the breach and gave a half-hearted salute to the spotter before dropping into her own breach towards Earth 5. Time to cover her tracks.

Two years later (another eighteen kills, and one shining save), the spotter would turn up at her morning briefing and tell her he'd been assigned as her backup. She'd shaken a lot of babysitters off in the years since her first mission, but this one stayed. This one stayed for a long time. (He stayed as long as he could. He apologised, choking on his own blood, that he couldn't stay longer.)

Like everyone around her, Cindy had grown up fighting, pretending to fight or training to fight. There was an easy acknowledgement in the US - more so than in any other country - that the justice system was rigged in favour of the few, and if you weren't one of the few, sooner or later you'd have to fight to protect yourself. And when that day came, pretty much without exception, the fight would be to the death.

It created an intense atmosphere of barely restrained violence in playgrounds and schoolyards, as kids who'd watched death fights and already started training for their own struggled to find a middle ground in socialisation. Allies were declared, the weak recruited the strong, and the bullies recruited the strongest. In places where the failure of the justice system was a foregone conclusion, but anyone with muscle enough to win a trial could escape prison time or capital punishment, the streets never got any safer.

Across the planet different rules had been put into place to ensure the most dangerous saw the jailtime they deserved, and that the most vulnerable were adequately protected - there were strict rules to the when, where and how of trials, witnesses and paperwork. Sometimes a liberal government in some small underpowered country took power for long enough to make headway into reversing the steep descent into violent chaos, but the political landscape was shaped by the power and physical prowess of its leaders, and bullies seized power wherever they could.

Cindy hated her Earth. She would die to protect it, but she hated the shape of its violence, the inescapable intent. She hated that it had made her a killer many times over, and she hated that walking through the streets on other Earths made her judge its people as weak and underprepared.

There was always a look in the eyes of an Earth 19 breacher, in the moment when they weighed her up and calculated the risk she posed against the freedom of an Earth where value wasn't calculated based on your ability to fight for your life. Every time she saw it, that expression, she feared for herself and her surroundings. One day a breacher wasn't going to challenge her, they were just going to strike, and all it took was one lucky strike.

The worst ones were those breachers who pulled another Earth's fighter in to fight for them - a fighter who didn't look at her and see someone who had trained from childhood to be the best, who had killed and not regretted it. There was no explaining to those fighters where she came from, no talking them out of what they saw as an easy win. They never understood when she reiterated that the fight was to the death, that there was a contract to these things and that nothing was forcing them to step up for the breacher.

She hated killing chumps, but those fights were easy to anticipate, at least.

She would never in a million years have anticipated Cisco.

There was never any question of killing Cisco.


End file.
